Cas: Any reason why not to make this more transparent to the user? Have you noticed users backing off when they have to deal with jws? It seems more convienent to use jws, just one click and you can play...

Not for Windows users. Most Windows users are just plain users and are afraid of anything that pops up asking questions. So if they don't have a high enough version of Java, they either don't have JWS or they get a prompt to upgrade. Even if they upgrade, they get a security sertificate question. As soon as you mention security, they answer no, even if it is safe. So after a 15MB download, they have another 10-12MB for the game. They just up and quit and stay away from Java games in the future. Never mind if you tell them that you only have to do the first 15MB download once, to get a current JVM. An EXE installer, on the other hand, they are familiar with and gravitate to quite easily. A Windows JWS version would only be easier for us Java developers, who already have a JVM installed.

So if they don't have a high enough version of Java, they either don't have JWS or they get a prompt to upgrade.

True, but I could argue that most java installations have JWS installed. Also since 1.4 the jvm updates itself.

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So after a 15MB download, they have another 10-12MB for the game. They just up and quit and stay away from Java games in the future. Never mind if you tell them that you only have to do the first 15MB download once, to get a current JVM. An EXE installer, on the other hand, they are familiar with and gravitate to quite easily. A Windows JWS version would only be easier for us Java developers, who already have a JVM installed.

Installing the jvm is a bit of a pain indeed (big download, too much user interaction). Sometimes i wish the jvm installation could be a bit more like flash. But if we have to believe Sun, a fair amount of pc's comes shipped with the JVM nowadays. The webstart demo of puppy invaders was a 5.5 MB download btw... maybe he downloads/streams more ingame, but that's very doable for most users.

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Not for Windows users. Most Windows users are just plain users and are afraid of anything that pops up asking questions. Even if they upgrade, they get a security sertificate question. As soon as you mention security, they answer no, even if it is safe.

Didn't get a security popup here, only a question if i'd like to add a shortcut to the desktop. Also, most windows users don't seem to bother about any security popup at all... look at miniclip; millions of users play activex games that throw security warnings upon installation...

I'm personally hardly experiencing any lack of acceptance of JWS (in fact many people mailed me that they really liked JWS' ease of use) and for me JWS works just great, but then again, I'm currently not *selling* anything distributed through JWS. I'm quite sure this makes a big difference. I mean, I can understand that people might be less willing to pay for anything if they don't get an .exe file for it in return, but instead a game *somewhere* on the hard drive, God knows where, maybe even on a harddrive they didn't want to install it on in the first place. You can explain all you like about that you just buy a code for unlocking the game, blabla, you can install it anywhere, blabla automatic update yadda yadda, but the fact is, if you have to explain things like that, the customer is already gone.

I believe this is probably much more important than any technical concerns about JWS or security warnings.

Actually "selling" something makes a big difference to us. Webstart has less than half the conversion rate of a downloadable executable. So I just leave Webstart to the experts.

There are lots and lots of disadvantages to Webstart from the customer's point of view. If they just want to nip in and play a quick game and I've just done a patch it won't let them play until they've downloaded 4mb of new version. They don't know how to copy the game from one computer to another. They don't know what they actually "own" - I have enough trouble as it is with people just unlocking a demo rather than downloading some separate "full" version after they've bought it. Etc. As for downloading the correct JVM etc, the experience is uncannily the same on the Mac which has JWS built-in.

I mean, I can understand that people might be less willing to pay for anything if they don't get an .exe file for it in return, but instead a game *somewhere* on the hard drive, God knows where, maybe even on a harddrive they didn't want to install it on in the first place.

Good point, hadn't looked at it that way...

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Actually "selling" something makes a big difference to us. Webstart has less than half the conversion rate of a downloadable executable. So I just leave Webstart to the experts.

There are lots and lots of disadvantages to Webstart from the customer's point of view. If they just want to nip in and play a quick game and I've just done a patch it won't let them play until they've downloaded 4mb of new version. They don't know how to copy the game from one computer to another. They don't know what they actually "own" - I have enough trouble as it is with people just unlocking a demo rather than downloading some separate "full" version after they've bought it. Etc. As for downloading the correct JVM etc, the experience is uncannily the same on the Mac which has JWS built-in.

Bottom line is - Webstarted games don't sell.

Thx for that info! I was considering to offer buyable webstart games on my site sooner or later. Too bad, as now I have to offer 3 different downloadable versions (for each platform) that would otherwise be supported transparently

Well, I still think JWS can be very usable for commercial games but probably not for the kind of games PuppyGames is offering. Especially for online gaming I think JWS can be really useful as an up to date version is essential then. For those kind of games, a mandatory download of tens of megabytes (sometimes even 100s!) if there's a patch is quite common.For that an easy to use installshied in an exe which downloads and installs a JRE if needed with minimum user interaction, after which it will install the game in JWS might be cool. It will save duplicating efforts to write an auto updater yourself.

Having played it (and allowed my eight year old son to do so too), I'd have to say that the version you are offering free is too good. Why pay money for something you can get for free? (This is not a criticism of the game: it is fantastic.) As a person who only plays games occasionally (so what am I doing on this site? I was curious) I can say that I wouldn't buy it because I can play as far as I can get (moon level at the moment) without having to pay. I have bought two games online -- Dweep and Snood -- because I was still interested when I got to the end of the evaluation section. Anyway, this is something for you to think about. My son discovered that you can use the mouse, and I think it is much easier to use and allows getting to a much higher level. I think this should be made clear in the options. In fact, I think you might restrict it to just the keyboard to make it a bit more difficult. I hope my comments are useful.

java.lang.NullPointerException at net.puppygames.applet.Game.exit(Game.java:932) at net.puppygames.applet.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:70) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source) at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeApplication(Unknown Source) at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeMainClass(Unknown Source) at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.continueLaunch(Unknown Source) at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleApplicationDesc(Unknown Source) at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleLaunchFile(Unknown Source) at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.run(Unknown Source) at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

It just evolved really. It was designed to be timeless, so our games didn't immediately date; easy to draw, so it didn't take Chaz ages to make sprites (#fail on that one unfortunately); and fast to render. It's grown up from what it was back in 2005 when we started using it. Revenge of the Titans doesn't really look retro at all. Or indeed like anything else. Titan Attacks just had a makeover to make all the graphics hi-res. A bit of an irony that I now need to use the low-res ones for Android.

There's no route from Java to PlayStation, end of. At least not one that is easier than simply porting the entire thing to another language or platform that the PlayStation supports. As it happens we have a C# version running under Mono, but the PlayStation stuff is C++, ported by Curve Studios (and it took them twice as long to port the game as it took us to write it from scratch in the first place in Java - and they had all the design and graphics done for them - food for thought)

There's no route from Java to PlayStation, end of. At least not one that is easier than simply porting the entire thing to another language or platform that the PlayStation supports. As it happens we have a C# version running under Mono, but the PlayStation stuff is C++, ported by Curve Studios (and it took them twice as long to port the game as it took us to write it from scratch in the first place in Java - and they had all the design and graphics done for them - food for thought)

Cas

RoboVM gets Java apps running on iOS. There is nothing stopping that same route from working with PS4. However, the RoboVM guys probably haven't put much effort into PlayStation support.

Why did you do the C#/Mono version? How does that compare to the Java version on Win/Mac/Linux? Why not use the Mono version for PS4 since Mono is baked into the PS4 OS?

There's a gulf of distance filled with missing hair between "it just works on PlayStation" and "the RoboVM guys probably haven't put much effort into PlayStation support" There's basically no route to PlayStation via RoboVM. There could be but as usual there is unlikely to be any commercial interest as almost nobody uses Java to make games, mostly on account of there never being much in the way of a serious competitor to Unity and Mono.

We didn't do the C#/Mono version ourselves - it woz Paul Cunningham wot dun it just for shits and giggles really. At the time we were wrangling with Curve we didn't really know what we could do with the C# version but it might make porting Ultratron and Droid Assault considerably cheaper than the C++ port as they've already been optimised for consoles (albeit the 360).

ported by Curve Studios (and it took them twice as long to port the game as it took us to write it from scratch in the first place in Java - and they had all the design and graphics done for them - food for thought)

Just curious, wouldn't it be more cost effective to pay a programmer to port something like RoboVM to PlayStation (or at least enough of it to run your games) rather than paying someone to port each individual game to another language (at least four games atm right?) and again for any updates. It'd reduce development time, allow faster times to market and allow working from a single code base.

Plus since it'd be a generic solution you could even recoup some of that development cost by licensing the code out to other java/android devs (say $5k or 10k each game).

Lastly after an exclusivity period, open source it for a little fame, glory, good company rep and for others to maintain

In short.... no. The cost of a good RoboVM port would be several times what it costs to port all our games from scratch into C++. Also I think that only Titan Attacks and Ultratron will fly... Droid Assault is too difficult to play with a controller (IMHO) and Revenge of the Titans is really very firmly designed for the comforts of a desktop PC.

If I had a spare million bucks, I'd hire someone to make a solution of some sort.

Can you say anything about what the costs were to have it ported by Curve, like a ballpark figure? Anything else you can say about getting it to PlayStation, or was it Curve who did the heavy-lifting there (in terms of doing business with Sony)?

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